hey. thanks for your response. i guess that in a way i am capable of good insight. i am good at offering explanations. analytically minded explanations. explanations... rationalisations... justifications... what is the difference? emotional connection, i think. i bypass the emotional connection in the present. therapist comments on something i do in the present and i'll launch into a explanation / rationalisation / justification. i think that how it is supposed to go is that i listen to what he has said. then kind of reflect on what i'm doing and take it on board. then feel an emotional response to that (in the present). then communicate that emotional response. then... look at where that emotional response is coming from (stuff in the past). i circumvent the process, however, by interpreting (rationalising / justifying) behaviour rather than allowing myself to have an emotional response there with my therapist in the presence. my ego... is too fragile. i must explain myself to pre-empt his negative assessment of me. to pre-empt the negative judgement and corresponding lecture. though of course he doesn't negatively assess me or lecture me. sigh. there is something to talk about right there. only... i tend not to because i feel too embarrassed. in therapy there is a lot of my defending and skirting around the real (the emotionally charged) issues.

i figure there has to be some kind of balance or middle way between exploratory and supportive therapy. it is like a single dimension and there can be changes over time. i guess that when functioning gets worse... i don't know... people talk about habituation sometimes. talk about how you have to power through the traumatic stuff otherwise if you back off everytime your functioning drops a little then you are reinforcing your aversion of it. i don't know though. folk myth or fact? i don't know. sounds a little like the 'no pain no gain' maxim of folk working out / exercise. maybe things go faster... but you can get the same benefits without pain - can't you?????

tap tap tapping away. i think we tap a little. i sent my t some stuff... poems. deep poems really. touching on some of the trauma. just a little. he hasn't mentioned them. maybe he will, maybe he won't. somehow it helps me to know that he knows even if i can't talk about it yet. i don't know.